being. He is gifted with the genius of Greece.

But Greece was not perfect. Her poetical and religious ideals were far
above her practice; therefore she died, that her ideals might survive
to ennoble coming ages.

Rome, too, left the world a rich inheritance. Through the
vicissitudes of history her laws and ordered government have stood a
majestic object-lesson for the ages. But when the stern, frugal
character of her people ceased to be the bone and sinew of her
civilization, Rome fell.

Then came the new nations of the North and founded a more permanent
society. The base of Greek and Roman society was the slave, crushed
into the condition of the wretches who "labored, foredone, in the
field and at the workshop, like haltered horses, if blind, so much the
quieter." The base of the new society was the freeman who fought,
tilled, judged and grew from more to more. He wrought a state out of
tribal kinship and fostered an independence and self-reliance which no
oppression could destroy. The story of man's slow ascent from savagery
through barbarism and self-mastery to civilization is the embodiment
of the spirit of optimism. From the first hour of the new nations each
century has seen a better Europe, until the development of the world
demanded America.

Tolstoi said the other day that America, once the hope of the world,
was in bondage to Mammon. Tolstoi and other Europeans have still much
to learn about this great, free country of ours before they understand
the unique civic struggle which America is undergoing. She is
confronted with the mighty task of assimilating all the foreigners
that are drawn together from every country, and welding them into one
people with one national spirit. We have the right to demand the
forbearance of critics until the United States has demonstrated
whether she can make one people out of all the nations of the earth.
London economists are alarmed at less than five hundred thousand
foreign-born in a population of six million, and discuss earnestly the
danger of too many aliens. But what is their problem in comparison
with that of New York, which counts nearly one million five hundred
thousand foreigners among its three and a half million citizens? Think
of it! Every third person in our American metropolis is an alien. By
these figures alone America's greatness can be measured.

It is true, America has devoted herself largely to the solution of
material problems--breaking the fields, o